Human Touch
by Gerald Tarrant and Quicksilver
Summary: A Wufei songfic, very reflective on Meilan. Please r/r


_Gundam Wing is property of Sotsu Agency, Bandai Studios, and TV Asahi. Sainan no Kekka and all original characters and plot copyright 2000 by Quicksilver and Gerald Tarrant. Please ask permission before reposting._

  
**SHIN KIDOU SENKI GUNDAM WING **

SAINAN NO KEKKA  
Human Touch: Wufei  
1st TV Ending Theme, from _Gundam X_

---------  
_Can I find the words to tell you  
How I live between the walls of steel and stone_  
--------- 

The hangar was dark, lit only by the reserve night generators, and he could barely see one foot in front of the other. 

There was only one mobile suit now. 

Staring up at its horned visage, he wondered what he had done wrong. Where he had failed. How. 

Because in the end, the only question that really mattered, was _how._

Taking a furtive glance around to make sure no one was there to tell him not to climb on the machine, or to report him to any authority for trespassing, he moved quietly to the ladder of the metal scaffolding that surrounded the Gundam, climbed up quickly and silently, popping the hatch with a whir and placing one foot inside. 

And stopped. 

It was such a long, long way down. With one hand on the metal piping and the other on the ladder, he peered down to the floor below, trying to see the glint of metal that would mean he was on solid ground. There was none. The long drop plunged into blackness past the Gundam's hand, and then there was nothing. 

It was like floating in space. 

---------  
_How I close my eyes to find some kind of rapture  
In a word where you can feel so all alone_  
--------- 

_Take me to that field of flowers_, she said. There was a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, but she was smiling. _I protected that field of flowers._

Jerking his head back up, he thrust his foot inside the cockpit, then his head, glancing around at the systems so familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. They had done some work since he had…come home. Circuits were pulled loose from the control panel in the front, and the main weapons screen was on the floor surrounded by a handful of bolts. 

He ran one hand over the metal. 

_Shenlong doesn't have any weapons! _

I'm not such a coward that I'll stand by and let my wife be killed…! 

He climbed all the way inside, sliding down into the seat and closed his eyes for a moment, then reached for the power-up switch. The hum startled him. He hadn't even noticed it when he had taken it out last time… 

Clasping his hands, he stared out the front viewport into the darkness. There was the slow red blinking of a red light across the way. The security light, most likely. He didn't know that much about machines. It was a red eye in the darkness. Blink. Blink. Blink. 

He closed his eyes. 

---------  
_When you find love in your heart  
The light in your eyes is a star_  
--------- 

He wondered if he should cry. Husbands should cry for their dead wives, right? That was what happened in all the old books. The beautiful maiden and the noble warrior who were madly in love and had pledged their souls to each other forever and ever and then for infinity. Sometimes they were blessed by the heavens, sometimes cursed by the demons, but it was true love, and nothing could ever stand in the way of true love. 

And then sometimes the noble warrior would fall in battle and sometimes the beautiful maiden would waste away, and the one left behind would weep. Because that was how things were. 

But when she had died he had felt only a blinding sensation, like searing lightning, as if he had been paralyzed and would never move again. Every step he took was as if through thick tar, everything he grasped was in slow motion. 

He saw her again before his eyes, smiling while she died. 

_Take me to that field of flowers._

---------  
_Dreams they come true  
It all comes to you, oh all at once_  
--------- 

He moved his hands over the controls, flicking the switches. Shenlong had no weapons, so it was all right. The green light for radar blinked on. The red one for communications. The yellow and blue for temperature and life support. 

The cockpit felt warm, almost welcoming, and that should have frightened the scholar in him, but as hard as he tried, he could feel nothing but a burning in his chest, where his heart was. 

He still couldn't cry. 

_You're not Meilan anymore…you're Nataku. _

Nataku. 

Nataku. 

"Nataku," he said aloud, gripping the control board. "Nataku." Bestowing that name upon the machine, its warm, welcoming embrace, as if she had come home, was still here with him, was still smiling. 

She'd never smiled at him like that until…he'd never held her like that, either. Not once. 

---------  
_If you believe in human touch_  
--------- 

_I want to be left alone_, he had said stiffly when they had told him he was going to marry. _Make sure it's a girl that will leave me alone._

Then they had told him whom he was to marry, and he had resigned himself to endless battle. Long Meilan…he had known her for years and regretted every day of it. He had never liked her. She had never liked him. The elders were surely mad. 

_Why did I have to marry you?_ she had said the afternoon of the wedding. 

_I'm asking the same question_, he retorted, and she turned her nose up at him. She was a whiny brat. The marriage would never work. Maybe the elders would see that. He had hoped they would reconsider, give him a good meek girl who would do nothing but cook and clean and stay out of his sight. That was the ideal marriage. 

Women were weak. 

That scholar boy, she called him at the ceremony. He hadn't even been allowed to speak to her before then. Not that he would have gone out of his way to do so. She was everything he was not. She was too proud. Not that he did not have his own share of pride, but his was a pride well founded. He was educated, literate, and versed in the arts. She was proud only because her clan was proud, and the pride of a clan did not make an individual. 

_Get the hell out of here! A wife should listen to her husband!_

They were too young. 

Children. 

---------  
_We can find a way to break the madness  
Take my hand and come with me_  
--------- 

_I was strong, wasn't I? You weren't ashamed of me as your wife?_

"You're strong," he said to the blackness. "You didn't have to prove it to me like that." 

_You're stronger than anyone. Stronger…than anyone. _

No. You're stronger… 

"Damn you," he whispered. "You didn't have to do that. You didn't have to die…" 

The burning in his chest was paining him and there was a burning in his throat too, and he laid his head down on the control panel because it hurt to keep staring into the dark, and his eyes were watering. The panel was warm. Like the touch of her hand, in the field of flowers. Her living body, her living breathing body, her soul. Nataku. 

He tried to breathe evenly but his chest was tightening up and now his eyes were burning too. That was strange. 

_It's beautiful, isn't it? I've never seen flowers…like this before…_

---------  
_Tell me that your love will live forever_  
--------- 

The humming of the systems was hypnotic, entrancing, and he placed the palms of his hands flat on the metal, running them up and down and feeling the vibrations on his skin, and then he closed his eyes and let the tears run down his cheeks, faster and faster because he couldn't stop them, and so this was what it was like to cry. 

The cockpit spun around him and tightened, like a pulsing living being, like her arms tightening around him and holding him, and she was so warm, and he wondered how he could have lived without her for so long. 

They had never been madly in love. They had never been in love at all, because he thought she hated him, and she thought he hated her. That was all it was, really. Children, trying to prove to the world that they were not children after all, except that it had gone horribly wrong, and now she was dead. 

---------  
_When you find love in your heart  
Nothing can tear it apart_  
--------- 

His arms felt like lead and his palms were cold and clammy, but he pushed himself up, back into the seat of the Gundam, noticing the wetness of the control panel with a dazed detachment. There was a remote in the pocket of the seat on the left hand side, and he pushed the button. 

A grinding noise as the doors of the hangar slid open. There was no alarm. The security light on the far side continued to blink red, steadily, regularly. Like a heartbeat. 

_You're strong…stronger than anyone._

The stars were bright tonight, almost brighter than the crescent moon. 

---------  
_Not man or steel  
Nothing is real except for love_  
--------- 

One hand reached for the flickering button on his right, mechanically, wavering. 

_Open…open your eyes!_

A flaring of energy as the eyes of the Gundam blinked on, and the humming changed pitch to a steady whine as the machine gathered itself under him. Shenlong. The dragon. Nataku. 

_I haven't proven myself worthy of being your husband…_

But it's all right, he added silently to himself as Shenlong strode across the floor of the hangar and then he was easing the thrusters on and it - she - leapt into the air on silver wings of moonlight. The wind currents were changing and he imagined he could feel the night breeze cool on his face, and that he was standing in a field of flowers once again, except that this time she was with him. 

She was here with him. 

---------  
_If you believe in human touch_  
--------- 

"You'll always be with me, Nataku." Easing the Gundam into a turn and shooting up now through the clouds, higher and higher until there were no clouds but only the fire of the stars. "I'll…I'll bring justice to the world, just like you wanted." 

_I'll leave my heart in that field of flowers. And…I swear…I'll come back to you. _

Don't forget me. 

---------  
_If you believe…in human touch_  
--------- 

Back to Act 4, Part 3.9 | Back to Sainan no Kekka 


End file.
